Green Zone League Articles

OK, so as you saw in the forum I came up with a new metric by which to evaluate offensive linemen. I plan on reviewing each lineman by position and scoring them in an article, but I first wanted to apply this new tool to Offensive Lines as a unit, by team.

This was a little bit labor intensive as I had to aggregate individual stats for all linemen based on their specific teams. It took some manual data entry and aggressive use of the sorting feature of Excel, but I was able to calculate the total number of pancakes and sacks allowed for each team, based on individual stats. I even had to look at a few free agent stats for players that had been signed and released by teams during the course of the season.

It's interesting to note that of the 32 teams, only 2 had their 5 starters play the entire time (or more precisely, had only 5 players record any stats). Those teams were Cleveland and Minnesota. As you'll see below starter stability on the line didn't translate into success. Everybody else had at least 6 players record stats at an Offensive line position. The team with the most players recording stats was Kansas City with 10 players getting time, which suggests that they wouldn't score well.

The team with the most sacks allowed was the Falcons and the Vikings with 37 each. The team with the fewest sacks allowed was 12 by the Panthers. The most pancakes were by the Broncos who dominated with 417. The Vikings had only 215 pancakes, the fewest and by a lot. As you'll see below, Minnesota had the worst offensive line by a wide margin. For the record, the average number of pancakes per team was 324 and the average number of sacks was 23. Those stats lead to an average of 168.75 score.